SUTHERLAND SPRINGS — As Sunday worship services began, a man in black tactical gear parked his Ford Expedition at a gas station, grabbed his assault style rifle, marched across the street and killed 4 percent of this town's population and 100 percent of its quaint anonymity.

Devin Patrick Kelley's first two victims were slain in the parking lot of First Baptist Church, the town's epicenter and the church attended by his mother-in-law, whom police say he had expressed anger toward and perhaps wanted to kill.

The front door of the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs shows multiple markings for bullet holes, with evidence of shell casings on the ground, as officials continue to investigate Sunday's shooting at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

(Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer)

He entered, according to law enforcement who reviewed the church's weekly recording of the sermon, intent on killing everyone in the room.

He spent time in the church, the FBI said, as he shot at them, ages 18 months to 77 years old: children, parents, grandparents, a baby in the womb.

He slaughtered eight members of the Holcombe family, whose patriarch, Bryan, was the visiting pastor on Sunday.

Bryan and his wife, Karla Holcombe. Crystal Holcombe, who was pregnant. Crystal's three children: Megan, Emily and Greg. Pastor Bryan's son, Marc Daniel Holcombe and his infant daughter, Noah, the youngest victim of the worst church shooting in U.S. history.

All dead.

Some of the members of the Holcombe family killed in the shooting at First Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Shown are, clockwise from top left: Bryan Holcombe; his wife, Karla; their daughter Crystal Holcombe, who was pregnant. Crystal's three children: Megan, Emily and Greg (pictured with a fourth child); and Bryan's son, Marc Daniel "Danny" Holcombe.

Annabelle Pomeroy, the 14-year-old daughter of Sherry and Frank Pomeroy, First Baptist's regular pastor, was found among the dead. Grief-stricken and tired from the out-of-town trip that spared them the same fate, Sherry says the physical and psychological damage exacted on the "church family she loved fiercely" would have been too much for her daughter Belle.

As of Monday, there were 26 dead, 20 wounded, with 10 of those victims still in critical condition. Authorities say the number included Crystal Holcombe's unborn child.

Stephen Willeford, a 55-year-old plumber with sharp aim, had heard the bedlam, left his house, barefoot but armed with a rifle, and engaged Kelley. The two began shooting at each other.

"I was terrified while it was going on," Willeford reluctantly told The Dallas Morning News.

That's when a stranger in a blue Dodge Ram truck named Johnnie Langendorff, 27, took a left turn and saw the two men shooting at each other. Somewhere in the chaos, two of Willeford's bullets struck Kelley in the leg and torso. The gunman dropped his rifle and fled to his Ford Explorer.

Langendorff says that's when Willeford came running at him.

"Barefoot, rifle, opened my door. And he's crawling in when he's telling me [the gunman] just shot up the church. And I said, 'Let's go.'"

'She was face down'

Chris Ward, who recently started a job as a truck driver working nights, was asleep when his brother and sister-in-law, Michael and Leslie Ward, crashed into his house to see if he and the kids had gone to church.

He didn't, but his wife, Joann, and the kids did.

Ward ran out of the house barefoot, got in his car and sped to the church, Leslie and Michael behind him.

They saw Ryland, 5, outside as first responders began the hell of assessing the human toll. Leslie stayed with Ryland. The men went inside looking for Chris' daughters and wife, Michael said.

Michael says the county judge said Chris' other daughter Emily, 7, was found beneath Joann's body, as if her mother were trying to shield the girl.

Sheriff Joe Tackitt Jr., who's looked over this dot on the Texas map for a quarter century, also saw inside the church, which he described as "mounds of death."

Hundreds of shell casings were recovered during the investigation, authorities confirmed later. All 15 magazines were empty.

"Children," he said, "That's the hardest part."

Remembrances left near the group of 26 crosses sit in the afternoon sun in Sutherland Springs, Texas as officials continue to investigate Sunday's shooting where 26 people died after a gunman opened fire at a Baptist church in the small town southeast of San Antonio. Photographed in Sutherland Springs, Texas on Tuesday, November 7, 2017.

Dead in a ditch

Inside the Ford Explorer, Kelley called his father, Mickey Kelley, to tell him he had been shot, that he wasn't going to make it, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Kelley had been living on his father's estate in New Braunfels. Neighbors say they often heard rapid-fire gunshots at night. In recent weeks, expensive furniture, recliners and couches and bicycles were place on the curb, where some neighbors snatched them up.

The FBI and DPS haven't yet disclosed a possible motive, except to say that Texas' worst mass shooting in history wasn't racially motivated, that "there was a domestic situation ongoing with the family and the in-laws."

A vehicle is hauled onto a flatbed truck where the suspect of a deadly church shooting was found dead near the intersection of FM 539 and Sandy Elm Road in Guadalupe County, near Sutherland Springs, Texas, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017.

(William Luther/San Antonio Express-News)

Suddenly, as the two were in pursuit, "He hit a ditch, hit a sign, came back out and I think tried to correct, hit the guard rail, and then went off into the bar ditch and that's where he stayed. He did not get out of his vehicle or anything," Langendorff said.

Late Monday, DPS confirmed that Kelley appeared to have shot himself in the head with a handgun.

Willeford, reached by The News on Monday, confirmed his involvement but was reluctant to provide details of a gunfight.

"I didn't want it, and I want the focus to be on my friends," he said. "I had friends in that church."